


Power Play

by sadstone_writes



Series: Celestial Steel [5]
Category: Deadpool (Movieverse), Marvel, X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Dialogue Heavy, I'm excited for this one, Minor Injuries, Minor Violence, Other, some cussing, superpower training fic, they/them pronouns
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-16 01:33:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29324010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sadstone_writes/pseuds/sadstone_writes
Summary: At the behest of the Professor and Scott Summers, Lane begins their training to understand their volatile mutant powers.(This one is dialogue heavy, just a heads up!)
Relationships: Piotr Rasputin/Original Character(s)
Series: Celestial Steel [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1722172
Kudos: 5





	1. Chapter 1

Scott Summers had taken residence on a couch in the corner of the Professor’s office, with Cable and Wade both sitting in armchairs on the far wall facing the massive desk that Lane now sat in front of. The Professor was behind the desk, calmly sipping a cup of tea that filled the room with a peppermint aroma. Lane had taken a cup (just to be nice) and now stared down into it instead of making eye contact with anyone or anything. 

“So….you’re not upset?” They asked quietly. 

“Not in the slightest.” The Professor replied, setting down his cup on his desk. 

“But, I broke your door, and probably scared a bunch of people.” Lane frowned, thinking about their sudden appearance in the garden in front of Piotr’s art class. More specifically, thinking of Piotr’s expression as they had snuck one last glance at him before being escorted back into the mansion. How crestfallen he had looked, the frown on his lips and the pull of his brow now tattooed in their brain. 

“If you think you’re the first person to break a door in a house full of superpowered teenagers, then I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” The Professor continued, and Lane looked up from the tea in their hands to see he had a small smile on his lips. “I think that as far as episodes go, this one was the best possible outcome. You acted with no hostility, even once the episode concluded, and your reaction was _flight_ rather than _fight_. Of course we want to get to a point where no episodes occur, but this does serve as a point we can build from. It’s also reinforced my belief that your memories may begin to come back on their own without any invasive actions.”

“He means digging around in your head and turning you into a vegetable.” Wade piped up, earning him a stern glare from Scott. 

Lane squirmed in their chair and frowned. “I’m not sure I _want_ them to come back if there’s more of that stuff. I know there is but...the specifics I could live without.” 

“I know it’s upsetting to think about Lane, but there may be some useful information to be gleaned from your memories.” The professor gave Lane another smile, but this one was sadder - not pity, not exactly, more condolence than anything. “But that’s a conversation for another day. Today I’d like to focus more on what we can do to prevent this situation from escalating in the future, and I believe Mr. Summers had a word on that.”

Lane’s only interactions with Scott Summers had been during their earliest days in medbay, when a rotation of the staff would come and sit with them for an hour or so to get Lane used to being around people again. Used to talking and being a real person again, really. The time spent with Scott was...awkward, to say the least. Lane had an idea that he was used to being in positions of high authority, and that spending his time in the medbay talking to a former brainwashed terrorist might have been beneath him. He was nice and cordial, but not like the others. _Not like Piotr_ , a small part of their mind echoed. 

He had risen from his seat on the couch and now stood to the side of the Professor’s desk with his arms crossed over his chest.

“While I can agree that this episode was the best possible outcome, the next one may not. We all got incredibly lucky.” He shifted his position, and Lane could feel his eyes staring at them through the red of his sunglasses. “The matter of the fact is that we don’t know the extent of Lane’s powers, or how dangerous they really might be. If they’re going to be a permanent resident here -”

“Hey hold on, nobody said anything about permanent.” Wade said, shooting up out of his seat and coming to Lane’s side. The air in the room had shifted at his statement; once warm and inviting it was now cold and pointed. “You said you’d help them get everything back in order, then it’d be for _them_ to decide on whether or not to stay.”

“What would you have us do? Go through all that work to rehabilitate them, then release them to you just to undo it all?” Scott fired back, trying to keep his cool appearance despite the clench in his jaw. “We could make them into something here, part of the team.”

“Get off your high-horse,” Cable growled, now on Lane’s other side. “There’s not a person in this room who doesn’t have blood on their hands in one way or another. That includes your team.”

“The X-Men don’t kill, we act in self defense!” Scott shouted, now completely devoid of any semblance of cool. “We’ve worked hard to distinguish that!” 

“Gentlemen, please,” The Professor began, only to have his mild-mannered voice drowned out by the argument of the other men. “I don’t believe this is-”

“Oh, right.” Cable scoffed, the volume of his voice rising. “Because it’s so much better to have people rot in jail instead of just killing them outright.”

“That’s not for us to decide! We don’t play the role of executioner, we bring them to justice -”

“Because the courts are _always_ so fair with their sentencing of mutant traffickers.” Wade sighed, “That’s more ridiculous than your boy band haircut.” 

_“Enough!”_

The room froze and looked down at Lane, who had not moved an inch from their seat but now held the teacup in shaking hands. Very distinctly and very carefully, almost robotically, they stood and placed the teacup on Xavier’s desk. Their hands flexed into white-knuckle fists, then relaxed, then repeated the motion twice. 

“I...I think it would be a good idea…” Lane swallowed, taking a deep breath and shakily exhaling. “If...we talked about this... _not_ now.”

The room was still as Lane took their seat once again, only to be broken by the Professor lightly clearing his throat and placing his hands on his desk. 

“Well, I believe that is an excellent idea. Mr. Summers, perhaps you and Lane could discuss the conditions of their training at a later time. If you wouldn’t mind showing Mr. Wilson and his associate to the main room, I believe Lane and I need a moment to...diffuse the situation.”

The three men cleared out (Wade and Cable still glaring at Scott), leaving Lane and the Professor alone. Lane had shrunk into the back of their chair, and was chewing on their lip with a frown. Their cheeks were flushed with the remnants of their outburst, a cold sweat having appeared on their brow.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to snap like that.” They said, wishing they could simply just melt into the floor under the Professor’s wizened eyes. “I...I don’t know where that came from.”

“No apologies necessary. How are you feeling?”

“Why does that matter?”

“I figured I’d ask instead of going into your head directly.” The Professor stated, wheeling around from behind his desk to now sit directly in front of Lane. “Most people find that to be quite rude and invasive.”

“Appreciate that.” Lane rubbed their face with their sleeve. “I’m tired. And...raw, If that makes sense? I’m still kinda reeling from earlier, all those memories that don’t feel like mine.” They paused, once again looking down at their hands. “It took...a lot to stay calm when they were yelling like that. Felt like my brain was on a hotplate and someone was turning up the heat.”

“I could tell, I imagine every telepath on this floor could.”

“Oh, great.” Lane huffed, sitting up in their chair and fixing the Professor with a steely look. “Then why didn’t you stop them? You could have _made_ them stop, couldn’t you?”

“Yes, I could have.”

“And you didn’t, _because_?”

“Because I had faith that you wouldn’t have another episode as a result. And I think it’s good for you to be exposed to confrontation in a controlled environment so that we can learn from it.”

“ _Faith_?” Lane asked, exasperated in the face of Xavier’s increasingly calm demeanor. “You’re playing with fire, controlled environment or not. I’m dangerous, Scott said so himself.”

“Part of healing is learning to forgive yourself when you slip, and start to give yourself credit when you don’t.” The Professor explained. “You’re not a mindless killing machine, and you have self-control. I wouldn’t have brought you out of medbay if I thought otherwise. You had every opportunity to act violent during your earlier episode, and this is where I disagree with Mr. Summers on it being simply ‘luck’ that prevented the situation from escalating further. ”

“So...what do you think it is?”

He reached out a hand to Lane, a gentle gesture of friendliness that looked to Lane like a lifeline. “I think you’re a person who cares about others, and knows the difference between right and wrong. I think you’re a good person, despite the circumstances of your past.”

Lane froze, their chest tightening. They couldn’t remember the last time they cried, really cried, but damn if they weren’t close to bawling like a baby right there in the Professor’s office. And yet, the tears wouldn’t come, only the prickling sensation behind their eyes that they rubbed away on the back of their sleeve. 

“I hope you don’t think I’m a hardass because I can’t cry,” they said with a dry chuckle, taking the offered hand and placing theirs in it. The touch was comforting, even if it was slightly damp from Lane’s sweating palms. “Maybe that’s what we could work on next.”

“Perhaps.” The professor agreed, letting go of Lane’s hand to wheel back to his regular spot behind his desk. “Not today though, I believe you’ve had quite the full day already. And I believe Mr. Wilson is waiting for you outside.”

* * *

Sure enough, he was. Wade nearly bowled Lane over as they stepped out from Xavier’s office and into the long hallway. 

“That was-” Wade began. 

“Impressive.” Cable grunted, standing up from his slumped position on the wall opposite the door and pulling Wade back out of Lane’s personal space. 

“Badass!” Wade shouted, waving his arms excitedly in a pantomime. “The look on Scott’s face, god, priceless. Like someone pissed in his cereal.”

“Happy to entertain,” Lane said, giving a mock bow and turning on their heel towards the main hall. “I’ll be here all week if there's anyone else I should freak out on.”

Luckily, there were no extra eyes on them as Lane padded their way up the stairs and down the staff hallway. That was the last thing they needed after today, and right now the sole motivation for willing their legs to move was the promise of a soft bed at the end of the hall. All of that emotional stuff, on top of running around the mansion mid-episode? Exhausting. 

Wade and Cable were close behind, they could hear the heavier footfalls of the two men echoing their own steps. 

“Sorry about that, before.” Cable’s voice murmured in their ear from beside them. “I was the one who went and got the old man, if I knew he was going to bring Scott with him I would’ve made a better call.”

“It’s alright. You...you _made_ a call, and that’s more than what I could've done in the moment.” Lane said, stopping and turning to face him. It was hard to look him in the eye, the hazy memory of their first meeting only increasing the intensity of his features. But right now, as jarring as it was, he did look regretful. “Besides, you got me special training with Scott, call it karma for me almost turning your team into mincemeat on the freeway.”

Lane continued to walk until they reached their door, opening it and immediately flopping onto the mattress with an audible groan. It wasn’t even past four o’clock according to the clock on the nightstand, and yet they felt absolutely spent. 

“You’re really going to go through with it then?” Wade asked. 

“Yep. He may be a dick, but he’s a dick with a point,” Lane sighed, cracking open their eyes to see Wade and Cable posted by the doorframe. “I still don’t really know how to control...whatever this is. I can’t really remember how to even get it to work, like, do I just shout ‘Avada Kedavra’ and shoot?”

“Maybe you gotta get angry, but the secret is that you’re _always_ angry,” Wade added.

Lane shrugged, holding up their hand to their face and rolling down their sleeve. The stars in their skin winked back at them, the dark blue and purple swirling and colliding into some far-off galaxy that had imprinted itself into their palms. The closer they looked, the deeper the galaxy seemed to stretch beyond the confines of their skin and to a deep void of space. Lane frowned, balling their hand into a fist and stuffing their hand back inside their oversized sleeve. 

“Guess we’re gonna find out.”


	2. Chapter 2

Mealtimes at Xavier's were a sort of controlled chaos as a number of mutant children and adults darted in and out of the kitchens and queued up for the toaster oven, pouring coffee or fussing over who’s turn it was to take out the garbage. Pre-made plates lined the kitchen island, and nobody batted an eye as Lane cautiously took one and scrambled to leave the fray. 

Henry  _ “Please, Call me Hank” _ McCoy was scribbling something down in his notebook as Lane took a seat across the table from him. Hank had been their appointed ‘breakfast buddy’ according to the visiting schedule for the day, and Lane wasn’t about to complain. They liked Hank - during their stay in the medbay, he had let them borrow some of his books to read between treatments; Jane Austen, George Orwell, and John Steinbeck. He talked to them like they were smart, and in turn that made Lane at least _ feel _ smart even if the majority of it all went over their head. 

“What’re you working on?” Lane asked, taking a piece of fruit and popping it into their mouth.

“Some possible theories.” 

“On?”

“You. Your powers, more specifically.”

“Oh.” Lane swallowed, the rising dread making any taste turn to ashes. They tried to mask it by stuffing more food in their mouth. “What’ve you got so far?”

“Well, Xavier’s has a baseline for mutants like yourself - energy in, energy out. Be that kinetic, or geothermal, or even emotional energy in some cases. For you, I believe we’re looking at radioactive energy. Following me so far?”

“I think. You’re about to give me a science lesson, aren’t you?”

“I’ll spare you from that for now. What you need to know is that, in theory, you should be able to absorb radiation and release it in some form.”

“So, you want to charge me up by running me through an X-Ray a few hundred times?” Lane asked, the image making them smile a bit. 

“The thought crossed my mind, but I did have an idea less tortuous for you.”

Hank pointed outside; it was a deceptively bright day despite the late winter chill in the air. The sky was a bright blue, and the sun shone down on Xavier’s lawn but did little to warm it. Lane leaned over to try and see what he was pointing at, only to fix Hank with a quirked brow.

“Radiation is all around us - uranium in the earth, radon gas in the air, and the world’s biggest nuclear fusion engine in the sky above us. That’s not even taking into account the cosmic radiation that hits earth from exploding supernovas billions of miles away in deep space.” Hank explained, pausing to take a sip out of his mug and then wiping away his coffee mustache. 

“Now, granted, the radiation put off by those things is incredibly miniscule, most of it blocked by Earth’s ozone layer or the crust of the planet. But I think that could actually help with the...lethality of your powers. Instead of absorbing straight from a source of radioactive material, you’ll be getting the pared down version. Less...”

“Like a walking cancer-ray.” Lane said with a frown, dropping Hank’s gaze and pushing around a piece of toast into their eggs. “It sounds like it would work, I’m not doubting you there - if anything, you probably know more about this than me.”

“So what’s wrong? And don’t say nothing; I may not be a telepath, but I  _ am _ a doctor.”

“Just nervous. About all of this, about Scott and training, and...I dunno. I don’t wanna hurt anyone, and  _ in theory _ , it sounds like I won’t, but there’s just that little part of my mind that’s just...terrified of all of this.” Lane confided, looking around the room at the variety of students that had piled in. “I don’t want to doubt you, or the Professor, but I really can’t see the forest through the trees just yet.” 

“Can I give you my professional opinion?”

“As a Doctor?” Lane asked.

“As a mutant who didn’t always look like this.” He said, gesturing to himself. “And as someone who didn’t always have as much control in my youth.”

Lane blinked, processing the mental image of a non-blue, hairless Hank McCoy; what took greater imagination was the idea of the man in front of them being anything other than the supergenius Doctor, or the White House attach é , or...well, kind of a nerd. Still, it didn’t take a genius to notice how each of his fingers were tipped with a claw, and how his canines were sharp and pointed in comparison to the rest of his teeth. 

They nodded. 

“Part of being a mutant is accepting what you are, _ who _ you are. This may not have been what you always were, but you owe it to yourself to try to figure out how to make it work. Speaking from personal experience - the more you try to fight it, or hide, the worse that fear becomes. The more you work with it, learn about it, the more you can start to trust yourself.” 

Lane blinked. “Has anyone ever told you you sound a lot like the guy from  _ Frasier _ ?”

* * *

The walk to Scott Summer’s office was uneventful, his office even more so. A few framed pictures lined the walls - mostly of Jean, and a few of Scott with a blonde man that Lane could only assume to be his brother. They looked too similar to not be related. There was one in particular that Lane hung on for an extra second - it was an old team picture of Scott, and Jean, and...was that Hank with no fur? And Ororo with a mohawk? There was another blue woman with bright red hair, and the professor beside her, looking much younger but still impossibly wise. 

“Try not to judge too hard, yellow spandex was all the rage in the eighties.” Scott said, pulling out a chair and motioning for Lane to take a seat. 

“The giant yellow X’s on the front are a fashion statement for sure.” Lane snickered, trying and failing to ignore the rising tension in the room. It permeated the air, the memory of raised voices and general untrust - that’s what it boiled down to. Lane didn’t trust Scott in the slightest. And yet here he was, sitting behind his desk awkwardly fiddling with a pen between his fingers and a frown on his brow.

“I wanted to apologize for how things escalated the other day.” He began. 

“You wanted to, or the Professor asked you to?” Lane asked, unable to hide the accusatory tone in their words and their lack of patience. “You seemed pretty content to start shit with Wade -  _ who had a point _ , by the way. I’m not here to join any teams, or... ‘make something of myself’ like you said.”

Scott winced at that, but Lane didn’t relent. “I’m here to get my head screwed on right. And if everyone thinks that getting a handle on my powers is gonna do that, then that’s what I’m here to do. Not join any team, or be pointed like some weapon and told to fire.”

They took a breath, letting the weight of their statement linger in the air a bit before fixing him with an undaunted look. “So, where do we start?”

“I...ah, right.” Scott cleared his throat, a bit stunned by the sudden verbal assault. “We can start with rudimentary training that all our new students go through. Basic combat, self defense, arms training.”

“Like...weapons? Guns?”

He nodded. “It’s not something we like to think about, but there may come a time when you’re without your powers and still need to fight. It’s a last resort, and we teach it as such. Cable handles most of that aspect - he keeps everything under lock and key, and our range is off-campus.”

“Makes sense.” 

“But before that happens, we’d want to get you in the Danger Room to do a power assessment - see what you’re capable of, how your powers work.”

“I’d like to find that out myself.” Lane muttered. “When do we start?”

“We have team training in half an hour, we can bring you into the observation deck so you can get familiar with the space before we put you inside.”

“Great.” Lane stood up from their chair and headed towards the door to the hallway. “I guess I’ll find my way there in half an hour.”

“Lane, wait.” Scott called, standing up from his own seat as Lane’s hand grazed the doorknob. “I know my reputation around here, and I’ll take the flak as long as everyone is safe - that’s my job, I keep everyone safe. I thought you were a risk to that, and I’m sorry, I really am. I want you to feel safe here, too.”

Lane paused a moment to look at Scott Summers, really look at him. He might’ve been a jerk, sure, but he was a jerk with what seemed like enormous responsibilities; and a jerk who could admit, with some pushing, that he had been wrong. That didn’t excuse him, not entirely, and it certainly didn’t make Lane want to be buddy-buddy with him, but it made him...more tolerable. Maybe. If Lane squinted  _ real _ hard.

“Ah, thanks, I guess.” Lane said, the tensions in their shoulders draining slightly at his apology. Unsure of what else to say, they gave the other mutant a wave and opened the door to his office. “I’ll see you in a bit.”

“Do you know how to find your way there? This place can be a bit of a maze.” 

_ It’s just a school, _ Lane thought, waving him off and quickly exiting his general vicinity.  _ How hard could it be?  _


	3. Chapter 3

Very hard, as the hallways of Xavier’s soon proved. They had spent a good ten minutes trying to navigate back to their room, then another fifteen trying to find the mysterious room where the X-Men were to undergo their training.

“You’d think that for a room called  _ The Danger Room _ ,” Lane muttered, peeking into another doorway only to find an empty classroom. “It’d be easier to fucking find.”

_ You’d think that you’d curse less as you walked around a school full of children. _

Lane quickly twirled on their heel at the sudden voice. “Jean?” They asked, wheeling back around to find only empty space. 

_ You’re close now. Elevator is two doors down - go to the basement level, then take a left. _

“This feels...weird.” Lane said, heeding Jean’s voice and finding the elevator right where she said it would be; it opened as they approached. “I never heard you guys when you were putting my brain back together.”

_ For those first couple of weeks especially, we thought it’d be better to have less voices in your head. It can be unnerving even for the mentally stable.  _

Lane pressed the button and the doors closed, slowly descending into the lower levels of the school. “So, you can just...broadcast yourself into my head whenever you want?” 

_ Saves us money on an intercom system for the school.  _

“Can’t argue with that,” Lane agreed. “But it would’ve been nice ten minutes ago when I was wandering around here like a deranged person.”

_ I thought you’d feel a sense of accomplishment if you found it on your own - you just needed a little nudge is all. _

The elevator dinged, and the doors slid open to reveal a long, silver paneled hallway. It was illuminated by bright, white lights that came from the ceiling and from where the walls met the floors. The largest door was at the end of the right branch of the hallway - a huge, almost vault door with a large ‘X’ criss-crossing at its center. In fact, all of the doors seemed to have a giant ‘X’ on them.

“Subtle Xavier, real subtle.” Lane chuckled, stepping out into the hallway and heading left. Here there was another branching section, and a large semi-circle area where a number of uniforms were encased in a glass display. Black leather, with various colors of piping at the seams, and various cuts to the material - sleeveless, one with a long flowing cape, and another with an attached cowl.

“Old uniforms - we mostly use them for early 2000s memorabilia.” 

Lane turned, seeing Jean making her way up the hallway and one of the large doorways closing automatically behind her. “You’re...here, right? Not in my head? Just want to check.”

Jean nodded, a smile playing on her lips. “I know this place can be hard to navigate even without the secret underground section. Back at the other end of the hallway,” she said, pointing to the vault doors, “that’s Cerebro; the Professor uses it to find mutants. Our hangar is down that way -” Jean pointed to the right of the semicircle, then to the left. “And our emergency surgery suite is down that way.” 

“What do you need that for?”

“A lot of hospitals refuse to treat mutants, or insurance companies refuse to cover anyone with an X-gene. With our healers around, we don’t have to use it very much, but it’s better to have it and not need it...” 

“Than need it and not have it.” Lane frowned. “I had no idea.”

“Welcome to mutanthood,” Jean said, moving past Lane and hitting a panel on the bare wall between the two display cases. A hidden door slid open, and another hallway emerged. Lane followed as Jean stepped through, still slightly marveling at the hidden wonders that continued to be unveiled. 

“Locker rooms on either side here - they’re a bit more upscale than the ones upstairs. Steam room, jet tubs, and plunge pools to help in muscle recovery.”

“Liking the sound of that,” Lane said, trying to remember the last time they had the luxury of a jet tub and coming up empty. 

“And here’s our stop.” Jean stood in front of the large ‘X’ doors and punched in another code to the side. The door opened, and she beckoned for Lane to come inside. 

It was a large, glass observatory of sorts, looking down into a massive empty space made up of the same silver paneling as the hallways. Twice the size of a football field, at least. There was a large console pressed to the windows, and a variety of blinking lights and computer screens that scrolled through pages of variables that Lane couldn’t begin to decipher. There was a rolling chair that Jean pulled up to the console and sat down in - motioning Lane to come closer to the very expensive looking equipment.

“Now we just wait for them to get ready, and we can let the show start.”

The two fell silent for a moment. Lane wandered the observatory space, looking at the various buttons and doo-dads, knowing that if Wade was here, he’d be trying to fiddle with all of them. Jean sat at the console, turning a knob or pressing a button here and there, her eyes flicking up to Lane after a minute or two. 

“Heard you gave Scott quite a tongue-lashing earlier.” Jean said quietly. 

Lane froze in their tracks with their back to the console where Jean was sitting. They liked Jean, and were slightly afraid of her at the same time; she had been the only other one to dig inside of Lane’s mind with the professor, meaning that if anything, she was just as powerful of a telepath as he was. Maybe even more so, the way that everyone talked about her,  _ revered _ her. But more than that, she was sweet, exuded cool older sister energy, and everyone looked up to her - even Lane to some extent, despite only knowing her for such a short period of time.

They cleared their throat and awkwardly shuffled back around to face her. “Ah, yeah. You heard about that?”

“Mhmm,” Jean hummed, turning her chair around so that she now faced Lane. “Don’t feel too bad about it. It’s a good sign to see you starting to stand up for yourself more - get back some autonomy, maybe a bit of your old self.” She smiled, shaking her head slightly. “He’s my fiance and I love him, but sometimes he needs to be knocked down a peg.” 

The intercom on the console crackled to life just as Lane and Jean both began to giggle.

“Are you ready for us up there?” Ororo’s voice called. 

Lane took a step closer to the windows and looked down at the lineup of X-Men that had assembled below. 

Ororo and Scott were easy to identify, both standing front and center like they were competing for the title spot. Logan wasn’t far behind, cracking his knuckles, and next to him was a shorter woman with brown hair that Lane didn’t recognize. She was smiling, cute in the girl next door sort of way, and elbowing Logan to try to get his attention.

There was Kurt Wagner, blue and devilish despite visiting the medbay to ask if Lane was religious and did they want to pray with him? Lane had said no, they couldn’t remember being religious, but appreciated his soft voice and his stories of the circus regardless. He was talking to another man on his left, towheaded with a cool sheen of ice beginning to form on his hands. And beside him was -

Lane’s stomach bottomed out. It was a wonder their eyes didn’t first land on him, the way he towered over everyone else, the way the lights reflected off of his metallic skin. The same way the sun had reflected off of him when he had found them in the garden, his features cast in sharp relief as he watched as they were escorted away by the Professor. Was he afraid of them? His face twisted in their mind, contorting itself into fear, disgust, anger; Lane shook their head, trying to clear their mind of those thoughts, and watched as Piotr Rasputin smiled, laughing at something Kurt said. 

Jean looked up at Lane for a second, opened her mouth to say something, but then closed it. Her hand clicked a series of switches, and the room below began to shimmer. Tiles on the floor began to warp, the horizon of the room shifting to a landscape beyond what was possible within the confines of the space; she hovered over a large button.

“Alright, get ready.” 

Her hand hit the button and a robotic, female voice rang out over the space. 

_ “Welcome, Senior X-Men team. Beginning training simulation in three...two...one.” _


End file.
